Holotype fragment (botany)

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: <Richard.Zander at MOBOT.ORG>
> The proposals on electronic publishing were clobbered at the Vienna
> botanical nomenclatural meetings, I hear, and probably won't be proposed
> again by a special committee, anyway, as in the last two congresses, for a
> long time (thus a moratorium).

> Given that electronic publication is now becoming an expected adjunct to
> hardcopy publication, I think a natural evolution towards publication of
new names solely electronically is in progress, and we need only wait a few
years until scientific journals phase out their hardcopy.

***
Well, there is nothing to prevent electronic journals from simultaneously
printing out a certain minimum of paper copies, say five to ten copies
mailed to major botanical libraries, to conform to the letter of the /Code/.
If this becomes common practice, then maybe the /Code/ will adapt itself.

There are plenty of spots in the /Code/ where it would help to periodically
update the wording, so an absolute moratorium would be a bad idea. All in
all the /ICBN/ is quite stable, conceptually (not much concepts in it that
were not already advocated by Kuntze, a century ago) but wording is another
matter ...
Paul